The Passover of the Lord
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue gave this sermon from his home
during the Great Vigil of Easter, April 11, 2020
“This is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death.” These words at the start of this Queen of Feasts, the Great Vigil of Easter set us up for a deep dive into Salvation History before plunging us with in the waters of baptisms “so that,” in Paul’s words in the Letter to the Romans, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
This longer than usual, night-time liturgy takes us back to a time in Church History when Christians met mainly in house churches and baptism could lead to a death sentence from the Roman Empire and connects us further back to Jesus’ disciples gathered in a locked room wondering if they would be rounded up and killed by the Romans on that Saturday that followed Jesus’ crucifixion. First the feast, then we will join the earliest followers of Jesus on the day after his death.
The Great Vigil of Easter we celebrate this night is foreshortened not uncommon for Episcopalians. Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches still keep the hours long liturgy, but some see that in its earliest form, this liturgy was probably an overnight worship experience meant to immerse those preparing for baptism into the story of the Holy Trinity from creation, through the Flood, and Exodus, through the Valley of Dry Bones with Ezekiel, and on to the coming of the Messiah. The Gospel of Mark in particular bears some stylistic devices that storytellers say assist someone in memorizing a long tale so that a key word in one story connects the teller to the next. There are storytellers today who travel the world reciting a Gospel as a single performance. It is possible that Mark began as just such an oral tradition based on St. Peter’s preaching that needed to be written down only when those who knew Jesus were dying.
But whether the full Gospel was told as a story in the earliest vigils, we know that when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman Empire for their faith, the catechumenate, or time of preparation for baptism lengthened considerably. Typically, a convert to Christianity would have three years of study after they decided they wanted to be baptized. During that time, the unbaptized could not attend an entire Eucharist, but only up to the peace. The Holy Eucharist itself was reserved solely for the baptized to even see, much less partake of.
Those who were known converts to Christianity faced death by torture in the coliseum as an example to others. We know a lot about what those earliest Christians thought of the martyrs being made by Rome as thousands died rather than renounce their faith in Jesus. Around the year 100, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch wrote a series of letters to churches as he was on the way to his death. Ignatius went joyfully to his death as he considered it an honor to die for Jesus.
Likewise, the 22-year old Roman noblewoman Perpetua wrote an account of her arrest and wait in prison. Still nursing an infant when arrested, Perpetua was a new convert to faith in Jesus so the locals thought she would be an easy mark, someone they could get to reject Jesus in order to live. Not yet baptized, she was still being instructed in the faith. Perpetua writes movingly of her faith in Jesus. In the normal course of her studies toward baptism, she would have been immersed on a night like this in a liturgy designed to take her back through the God’s saving acts one more time.
Christians met often in house churches like those we encounter in Paul’s letters in scripture. It is to just such house churches in Rome that Paul write in our Epistle for this evening, “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
This was the truth those praying and singing hymns would cling to as lions roared in the coliseum and killed others in their group while they awaited the same fate.
The smaller house churches would come together for common worship, but meeting in homes was most common in those days of persecution. So your watching me online tonight is a new twist on a very long tradition of worship primarily taking place at home. In the Episcopal Church we continue that pattern with the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and even Noonday Prayer and Compline offering daily worship at home along with gathering with others at church.
This was natural for a faith that started in homes like Simon’s house in Capernaum. Jesus would rename him Peter, but Jesus healed his mother in law in Simon Peter’s house and alongside the synagogue and teaching on the mountainsides we see that the first followers of Jesus gathered in places like the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany.
When the unthinkable happened and Pontius Pilate had Jesus’ crucified, of course the disciples who scattered in fear would find themselves gathering back together in an upper room in a house in Jerusalem. There in fear that they would be next, they spent an anguished Holy Saturday in the grief of the one thing they now knew, Jesus was dead and his movement had ended. Rome knew how to put someone to death. The women at the cross as well as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea who got his body from Pilate knew that he was dead.
It wasn’t faith in the resurrection that propelled the women to the tomb that morning, but love for Jesus. The women were unafraid of what Rome might do to them and were only concerned for mourning Jesus rightly. He has transformed their lives. Jesus had seen, really seen those others dismissed and overlooked and he loved them. The women would not abandon doing right by him out of fear for their lives.
First an angel of the Lord and then the resurrected Jesus himself tells them “Do not be afraid.” Jesus adds, “go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” Jesus sends them back to where the story all began to begin anew, now with the knowledge that the love of God is more powerful than death.
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The Apostles seemed blissfully unaware of high-speed internet and left no writings about Facebook Live or YouTube. But they did pass along to us a way of seeing the world through God’s eyes. So that we might not have seen a pandemic coming, we were not ready, but we were prepared. Our faith prepared us the way it prepared Christians gathering in small groups in their homes out of fear of a very different danger.
For the purpose of the Vigil is to teach that the God who “created humankind in his image,” set a bow in the clouds as a sign, brought Israel out of slavery into freedom, is the God who was with us when we were baptized into new life in Jesus Christ. This liturgy teaches was Jesus put succinctly on the night before he died, “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.” You may be alone in your home or gathered with a few family members, but you are not alone. You are connected to the creator of all that is and loved by a savior who would not give up on that love even when the price was death on a cross.
The same Holy Spirit who spoke to the hearts of Ignatius and Perpetua in with you this night. For this is the Passover of the Lord, when Jesus passed from death to life to show us the way through faith in him.
We have every reason to be prudent and to stay safe and keep all we can well. But we need not be afraid.
For as the great preacher of the third century John Chrysostom wrote in the Easter sermon read at every Orthodox Church Easter Vigil to this day,
“You who have kept the fast, and you who have not, rejoice, this day, for the table is bountifully
spread! Feast royally, for the calf is fatted. Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the banquet of faith.
Enjoy the bounty of the Lord’s goodness!
Let no one grieve being poor, for the universal reign has been revealed.
Let no one lament persistent failings, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free.
The Lord has destroyed death by enduring it.
The Lord has vanquished hell when he descended into it….
For Christ, having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To Christ be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!
